Ticket
by Sylvr
Summary: It's a long road to becoming James T. Kirk. This is just the beginning. This is the story of Jimmy. T for mentions of abuse.
1. Chapter 1

TICKET

_It's a long road to becoming James Tiberius Kirk. This is the beginning of that road._

* * *

Jimmy is three when Winona Kirk remarries. He is dressed in a tiny suit and given a pillow with glittering rings on it. Sammy is dressed in a suit, too, and he stands at the front of the big booming church. Jimmy waits to the side, a grown-up he doesn't know gripping his tiny fingers in a clammy hand. He is told to be on his very best behavior.

He doesn't know why Mommy is so excited. He doesn't like the big scary man that Sammy is standing beside, but Mommy seems so happy every time she sees him that Jimmy is happy too. Everyone is happy. He doesn't understand what is going on.

* * *

Frank is a hand-to-hand combat instructor at Starfleet Academy in San Fransisco. After the newlywed's month-long honeymoon, he stays at the academy for most of the week, commuting back to Riverside for the weekends. Jimmy likes that Frank is gone most of the time. Mommy doesn't. She works at the shipyards in town, creating state-of-the-art computers for the Federation's ships. Sammy is at school most of the time, and plays with the other big kids. Jimmy is not welcome among his older brother's eleven and twelve year old friends, and the kids at the daycare don't like him either.

He teaches himself to read and use a computer console instead.

* * *

By the end of the first year of marriage, the shiny-newness of things has worn off.

Winona is still in love with Frank, but she's content to have a weekends-only marriage. She knows Frank is probably cheating on her with someone at the academy, but so long as he doesn't take it home with him, she doesn't really care. They argue a bit, mostly because they think they should than because either of them really expected anything more from the other.

She decides to sign up on another long-term mission with Starfleet. She will be off planet for three years.

She passes the care of four year old Jimmy and eleven year old Sam to her mother-in-law, the ancient Cleopatra Kirk. Cleo's husband, Tiberius, passed away more than ten years before, and she had always welcomed her grandchildren into her home with open arms. She said they made the place a little less lonely. She had been the one to look after Sam when George and Winona were in space, and she looked after Jimmy too, when Winona was at work.

Jimmy liked Grammy Cleo. She was old and smelled funny, but she always hugged him tight and had cookies for him. He had to help with chores, but Granny Cleo read him stories from her collection of real paper books and taught him things while they went on their daily walks through the nearby woods. She'd grown up on a farm in the Midwest, and she knew more about making sensible use of nature than most botanists. She told him how to tell one kind of tree from another, how to identify animal tracks, how to find water, ways to always know where north was, and how to figure out what plants were edible. The last lessons were Jimmy's favorites—they would pick bits of whatever Grammy Cleo said was safe and try them. Sometimes they were good—he liked the wild mulberries, but other times the taste was not so great, and he'd scrunch up his little face and stick his tongue out. Grammy would laugh at him, and swing his pudgy little hand in her wrinkly old one, and call him sweetheart.

The year he and Sam spent at Grammy Cleo's house while Winona Kirk was in space was the best one of Jimmy's life.

* * *

**A/N: So...I've been on a ST kick lately, for no particular reason. So I wanted to start a fic-a multi-chapter, but not too long. I'm publishing this in a burst, so prepare to have flooded inboxes, o you who have followed me. ST's not mine.**


	2. Chapter 2

TICKET

_It's a long road to becoming James Tiberius Kirk. This is the beginning of that road._

* * *

A year and a half after Winona left Earth, Frank is asked to resign from Starfleet. There is no official reason given, but Frank knew he didn't have much choice, and signs the papers with a few brief rants. Though no one official says anything, the Starfleet grapevine is heavy with the true story. Frank had been asked to leave for being too brutal in his instructing methods. Several cadets had wound up hospitalized, one permanently injured. There were also rumors that he had been inappropriately involved with one of his students. Starfleet couldn't pull together a conclusive case against him, so they just got rid of him as quietly as possible. He slinks back to Winona's empty house in Riverside, and drinks himself into an angry stupor.

Jimmy and Sam are still living at Grammy Cleo's, though, so they don't really care much about Frank.

But then Granny Cleo gets sick. Really sick. And one afternoon when Jimmy comes home from school she won't get off the floor. And he keeps telling her she has to wake up, she can't sleep there, they have to go on their walk. He holds the wrinkly cold hand in his pudgy little one and he talks to her until Sam gets home. And Sam calls the hospital, and it's all sirens and uniforms and _Time of Death was Ten AM _and _Sudden stroke; she died instantly. _Jimmy just wants her to get up so he can tell her about the hummingbird he saw on the way home.

* * *

They move in with Frank.

Jimmy is six, now, and he feels very old. Sam is fifteen and he feels very grown up. Jimmy is quiet and more withdrawn than ever, spending his time reading or wandering outside. Sam is loud and rude and rebellious. Neither of them like Frank. Sam deals with it by never being home. The high school is within walking distance of the Kirk house, and he walks out the door at seven am and comes back well after nightfall every day.

Jimmy doesn't know what he does when he's not home; doesn't know if he even goes to school. Sam says it's none of his business and he's a nerdy little brat.

The elementary school is farther away, and Jimmy has to take the bus that picks him up at the end of his driveway every morning and drops him off there too. The bus is old and noisy, and Frank can hear it from the house. He waits for Jimmy to come inside. There is always something he has done wrong. He tries very hard to do things right, but Frank is never happy with him. He cries the first time Frank hits him, but Frank just yells at him and calls him a sissy. He says it's pathetic that he just cries and takes a hit like that. That he has to keep his guard up. You call that fighting? That's pathetic!

Jimmy sniffles and kicks him in the shins. Frank laughs (and Jimmy, a little horrified, thinks it sounds almost _approving_) and punches him so hard he blacks out.

Jimmy doesn't cry again.

* * *

Jimmy does well in school.

Too well, in fact. He does so well that they jump him three grades. He is the only seven year old in the sixth grade class. They don't like him. He gets in a fight on his second day with two of his bigger, stronger classmates. He wins. He is used to fighting Frank and loosing. He thinks it is weird feeling, winning a fight.

They suspend him. He doesn't tell Frank, just takes the schoolwork he was assigned out onto the trails he used to walk with Grammy Cleo. He spreads his textbooks under a red oak tree and munches on wild blackberries while he works. He sleeps under the tree at night, enjoying the last warm days of summer.

He finishes that year's coursework over the three days he is suspended.

When he turns the papers in, they sit him down and have him take more tests. They say these tests are more accurate, and ship him over to the high school. They don't want to deal with a tiny genius troublemaker, who stares at them with big serious blue eyes. He is a little bit terrified, but mostly he is numb. He's not a sissy. He doesn't cry and he doesn't whine.

Jimmy just does what he has to.


	3. Chapter 3

TICKET

_It's a long road to becoming James Tiberius Kirk. This is the beginning of that road._

* * *

The freshman class goes on a field trip to the shipyards. The trees are turning orange, and the endless cornfields are amber with autumn. Jimmy sits alone in the back of the rowdy bus and watches them go by. Sam sits at the front of the bus, laughing raucously with his rebellious friends. He will go home for the weekend with his friend Ricky. Jimmy knows Sam resents him for being in the same year as him. He says that Jimmy is making him look stupid. Jimmy thinks—but doesn't say—that Sam is smarter than him, just lazy.

Jimmy gets off the bus at the end of his driveway by himself. He walks to the door and discovers that Frank has changed the code for the keypad on the front door, and Jimmy can't get in the house.

He wanders off into the woods and spends the night in the hollow of an overturned poplar. He eats raw pumpkin seeds from the now-overgrown pumpkin patch he'd started with Grammy Cleo. It's too cold to be sleeping outside, and he shivers and wakes up every half hour all night. When morning comes, he goes back to the house and sits down in front of the door. He pushes buttons and fiddles and fidgets until he's figured out how the keypad works. He gets a screwdriver and pulls the faceplate off to look at the wires inside. He puts it back together.

And then he hacks into the keypad and opens the door. It's six at night and he's been at it for ten hours when he finally makes it into the house. Frank is out drinking tonight instead of lazing amidst the bottles on the couch, so Jimmy makes it safely to bed.

The next day he goes to the library and looks up everything he can find on computer hacking.

* * *

Winona Kirk is due back from her three year mission just after thanksgiving. They have three days off from school, and she is supposed to be back on Earth the day before classes start again. Even Frank seems cheerier at the thought of her return, and doesn't hit Jimmy for the week before her shuttle is scheduled to arrive. All three of them get in the car together for the first time in the years Frank has been their guardian, and he drives them to the airfield attached to the shipyard.

They wait in the arrival bay with other eager families. They watch as the shuttle lands, and a flood of uniforms disembark. Jimmy actually smiles, looking for his mother. They watch tearful and joyous reunions alike, but they see no Winona Kirk. They wait for two hours.

Finally, Frank's com buzzes with a brief video message. It's Winona. She's signed up for another year's tour.

Sam doesn't say anything. He just gets up and storms out of the terminal. None of them know where he's going. It doesn't seem to matter, anyways.

He doesn't know it, but Jimmy will never see his older brother again.

Frank looks furious. He grabs Jimmy's arm hard enough to bruise and drags him back to the car. When they get to the house, Frank smashes Jimmy so hard against the kitchen wall that he sees spots and knows he has a concussion. He kicks Frank in the chest and _feels_ his lowermost right rib crack. Frank swears.

And then he breaks Jimmy's left leg.

* * *

Later, Jimmy looks at a calendar and figures out when his mother is supposed to be back this time. He picks up a red pen to mark the date, but then he hesitates. He leaves the day unmarked. It's the right call: a year later, there's a message on Frank's com saying she's signed up for another five years. Frank is too lazy to bother getting a divorce, even though he would like to be rid of Jimmy.

Jimmy would like to be rid if Frank, too.


	4. Chapter 4

TICKET

_It's a long road to becoming James Tiberius Kirk. This is the beginning of that road._

* * *

Jimmy finishes high school over the summer. He's done trying to fit in with the other, bigger kids. He never does anything right. He's always a little too smart, and a little too quiet, and a little too vicious. And he's way too young.

So he takes the classes he needs for a diploma online. He hacks into the servers that process his exam grades just because he's not patient enough to wait for the results to come.

But soon enough, the piece of paper with his name on it—James Tiberius Kirk—comes in the mail. He seals the diploma in an airtight plastic tube and secrets it away in the woods with the other few items he prizes—a photo of his father, one of the medals his mother had tried to throw away, a toy starship Sam had given him when he was little. The diploma is the first tangible sign that he has accomplished something, that he is _worth_ something, that he has received in his life.

He is eight years old.

* * *

He decides to sign himself up for online college courses a week after the diploma arrives. He has to make a believable computer replica of his mother and Frank to consent to the courses, though, and that takes him a month, but at the end, he has facsimiles of his guardians that will pass muster. He plays master puppeteer and arranges a conference between the dean and his virtual parents. The dean is delighted with the child genius and his very supportive guardians, and lets them sign him up for anything they think he can handle. He arranges things so the boy doesn't have to pay a cent of tuition-the prodigy gets a full scholarship. They swear the dean to secrecy—the last thing Jimmy wants is attention.

He signs up for twenty five credits in his first semester. The classes range wildly across disciplines, spanning from history to theoretical physics to mechanics to classical literature to languages. He does magnificently in all of them.

* * *

Frank still thinks he is in high school. He leaves every morning at the same time he always used to and comes home at the same time every night. He spends his days mostly outside with a datapadd or in a public building somewhere. Sometimes he hacks his way into the shipyard. The people in charge there are old friends of his father's, so he doesn't really get into trouble when they catch him. It becomes something of a game between the eight year old and the security teams—how far into the complex can he get before they catch him?

He learns to play, there among the Starfleet personnel. It's a savant's game of tag, and he delights in it. It awakens a previously buried mischievous streak in him. The officers there slowly learn to love the quiet, bright child too, and they begin to let him stay a bit after they've caught him. Frank's well known as the town drunk, but there's nothing they can do to help Jimmy, so they let him hang around the shipyard.

They show him how the theoretical knowledge he'd learning in his classes actually applies in reality, and find themselves continually shocked at how quickly he picks things up. Within a year, they're letting the nine year old work alongside them. He's supervised, of course, but he loves watching the starship come together under his hands.

* * *

He gets his bachelor's degree in computer science (with high honors) three days after his tenth birthday. He celebrates with Teylah, the chief engineer at the shipyards, who brings him a cupcake with a lit candle planted in the frosting. It's the first time he's had someone give him cake since he lived with Grammy Cleo, and everyone who can spare a moment from the work on the ships sings a crazy mixmash of the birthday song and congratulations.

Teylah says, "Happy Congratulamabirthday!" and he blows out the candle.

It's the happiest he can remember being.

* * *

He beats Frank in a fight. He is almost eleven, and it was mostly luck.

Frank had shouted him for a few minutes, like he always did, and then tried to hit him. Jimmy had blocked. Jimmy had learned enough over the years of living with Frank that he could usually hold his stepfather off for a minute or two, but Frank always got him in the end. But this time, just as Frank was winding up for the knockout blow, he stepped on one of his own discarded beer bottles, and his foot slipped out from under him. Jimmy snaps out a kick without thinking, and for once, it actually connects. In fact, it connects so hard it breaks Frank's jaw and knocks him out cold.

Jimmy stares down at Frank for one long minute. He looks so weak, lying there on the floor, but Jimmy knows that as soon as Frank wakes up, he'll kill him.

So he runs upstairs and gathers everything he can think of, anything he might need. He steals all the credits out of Frank's wallet, but leaves anything that can be traced. And then he goes and gathers everything from his secret place in the woods, where he boots up his datapadd and starts the program he's been working on for years. He's finally brave enough to actually do it, because there's no turning back now.

He hacks into the government network, and files documents that legally emancipate him.

For the first time, his life is really his own.

* * *

He hikes to the terminal at the airfield near the shipyards, because that's one of his favorite places to go and people-watch when he needs to think.

He sits down on the bench and looks up, and there it is, in bold font on a poster:

Colonists wanted for

FARMING COLONY

Are You Brave, Hardworking, Young, and Looking for Adventure?

We have a place for you!

Buy a ticket today!

It seems to Jimmy that another planet would be a great place to be. It's time to leave the past behind.

He marches to the ticket counter and pulls out his stolen pile of credits, hefting the backpack with everything he owns a little more securely.

"One ticket to Tarsus IV," Jimmy says. And the future has never looked so bright.


End file.
